


The Flatmate Agreement

by OldToadWoman



Category: Sherlock (TV), The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Humor, Sheldon's Meemaw (off-stage references), Sherlock's Mummy (off-stage references), how Mike and Sherlock became friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 17:13:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1109441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldToadWoman/pseuds/OldToadWoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were parts of The Roommate Agreement that Leonard actually approved of wholeheartedly, but he still wondered sometimes why a ban on storing dismembered body parts in the kitchen needed to actually be put into writing. It was slightly worrying, but it still never occurred to him that somewhere in the world there might be a roommate even worse than Sheldon Cooper. (Quick question: Who do you feel more sorry for? Leonard Leakey Hofstadter or John Hamish Watson? Consider this story a cage match between the world's two most annoying living companions.) Once upon a time in London...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Flatmate Agreement

* * *

It began with a yellow sticky note.

**[ "No violin after 9PM. SC" ]**

However, the note had been placed on the television screen which Sherlock never looked at so it escaped his notice for several days, by which time others had accumulated.

**[ "I have an 8AM class. I require the shower prior to leaving. You know this. I shouldn't have to bang on the door every morning. SC" ]**

**[ "No violin after 10PM. SC" ]**

**[ "Don't put the eggs in the door of the fridge. They spoil faster due to the increased exposure to room temperature when the door is opened. SC" ]**

**[ "NO VIOLIN AFTER 11PM. SC" ]**

The first one that Sherlock noticed was above the toilet paper dispenser.

**[ "The toilet paper goes over the roll. SC" ] **

Moments later he found another on the bathroom mirror.

**[ "Can we at least agree on no violin after midnight? SC" ]**

He quickly hunted down the others.

He rarely saw the American face to face, which at first seemed to make him the ideal flatmate. They kept to fairly different schedules and had quite different interests. It could theoretically be stated that they had entirely separate circles of friends as well, but neither of them had, in fact, _any_ friends which technically meant they had _all_ of their friends in common. Sheldon Cooper was clean and quiet, other than his tendency to talk continuously about trivialities, but it was just a hum of background noise that Sherlock could easily ignore. He also occasionally shared delusions about people who could fly. And lasers. Very keen on lasers for some reason. Sherlock summed him up as mostly harmless, which Sheldon seemed to think was very witty.

He couldn't find the sticky notes so he wrote his reply on the back of a past due notice from the electric company and stuck it to the refrigerator with a magnet.

**[ "The violin helps me think. Not negotiable. SH" ]**

The electric bill flitted across his mind for half a moment. The notes were mildly annoying, but as long as Mycroft was being tight with living expenses, he'd have to put up with a flatmate of some kind or another. And Mycroft had been _very_ tight with the living expenses since his last expulsion. Apparently not needing to pay tuition somehow meant he didn't need as much money, which didn't account for the price of textbooks at all, among other things. Sherlock still _attended_ whichever classes he felt like (at whichever university he felt like for that matter). Getting kicked out of school (again) just meant that he never had to bother with tests or homework.

His last flatmate had vanished mid-lease after a minor explosion in the bathroom and the one before that had not only threatened, but _actually reported him to the police_ for another experiment. Most annoying. That had led to a lot of awkward questions before Mycroft sorted it. No telling whether the next flatmate would be even more unreasonable. Might as well just deal with this one. In a grand show of politeness he added:

**[ "Do whatever you want with the toilet paper. I will not touch your eggs. SH" ]**

The next day, he found another note.

**[ "Pianissimo? SC" ]**

This seemed reasonable enough, so he wrote underneath it:

**[ "Agreed. SH" ]**

With that one word, he sealed his fate and the fate of all of Sheldon Cooper's flatmates to come. With one word, he had set a precedent, although it was perhaps the events of the following week that truly made it official.

**[ "You agreed that the eggs do not go in the door! SC" ]**

**[ "Did I? I don't remember that. SH" ]**

It was a little lie. Unimportant. He needed the space in the back of the fridge and the eggs were in the way. Sheldon had sent in the electric bill with the payment so he had no proof anyway.

Sheldon did still have the note that said:

**[ "Pianissimo? SC  
Agreed. SH" ] **

He showed it to Sherlock on occasions when he felt the spirit had been broken, until he finally had to tape it to another piece of paper as the edges kept curling up. Sheldon meticulously saved every other note documenting their agreements from then forward.

Soon there was a binder. They kept it on the coffee table and generally left it open to the first page, which was added to on a daily, if not semi-daily, basis.

**[ "Look, I don't know how they do things in England, but back in Texas, we go OUTSIDE to do our target shooting. SC" ]**

**[ "I believe you would be arrested for that within London. SH" ]**

**[ "No indoor target shooting during exams. SC" ]**

**[ "Agreed. SH" ]**

Dr Sheldon Cooper was, by his own description, a genius. This confused Sherlock a fair amount as he had encountered pigeons with greater quantities of common sense. However, the idea of a man barely out of his teens studying for his second doctorate struck him as notable and, at first, he had observed him carefully trying to find signs of this alleged genius. Perhaps doctorates were easier to earn in America?

**[ "Clean the fridge more often. That pork had gone bad. SC" ]**

**[ "What did you do with the blue container?! SH" ]**

**[ "I told you. I threw it out. The pork tasted rancid. There's no call for overuse of exclamation marks. A sentence can end with other punctuation you know. SC" ]**

**[ " ~~It wasn't p--~~ " ] **

Sherlock scratched that out and started over.

**[ "It was an EXPERIMENT which you RUINED. Do not eat anything I put in the refrigerator. SH" ]**

**[ "Fine. Be that way. You can buy your own bran flakes from now on. SC" ]**

In the end, Sherlock had finally decided that Sheldon's "genius" was primarily a form of obsessiveness, which, while theoretically admirable, focused on things that Sherlock couldn't see the point of at all.

**[ "Don't put the eyeballs in the door of the refrigerator. They degrade faster due to the increased exposure to room temperature when the door is opened. SH" ]**

**[ "Agreed. SC" ]**

The next day the binder had a label affixed to the front of it: ROOMMATE AGREEMENT

An odd plastic device was sitting on the table next to it. The newest page within described its purpose.

**[ "I have taken the liberty of purchasing a label maker. This should prevent any more confusion in the kitchen. SC" ]**

The receipt for the label maker was taped beneath and Sheldon had helpfully written in half of the total as if Sherlock were incapable of dividing a figure by two.

Sherlock examined the device and then printed out a little rectangle of tape that said "FLAT" and corrected the front of the binder.

**[ "As long as you are in England, the correct term is 'flatmate'. SH" ]**

A pivotal, but at the time unrecognized, event in Sherlock's life occurred that semester. It would be more than a decade before he realized how important that singular moment was.

**[ "Someone identifying herself as your 'my ma' telephoned. You are ordered to consume more soup immediately before you perish from malnutrition. SH" ]**

**[ "Why does Meemaw think I'm going to starve? SC" ]**

**[ "She asked for an estimate of your current weight. She was displeased with my answer. SH" ]**

**[ "You have no idea how much I weigh. I have no idea how much I weigh. What did you tell her? SC" ] **

**[ "Eight and a half stone. SH" ]**

**[ "Have you even heard of the metric system? SC" ]**

**[ "Was I wrong? SH" ]**

**[ "Honestly, who still uses stones as a measurement? You don't live in a cave. SC" ] **

**[ "I'm sure there are scales at your university. Was I wrong? And given the natural weight fluctuations of a human being, measurements more precise than to within half a stone are unnecessary and often lead to neurosis. SH" ]**

The American went to university three miles across town which was quite fortunate. Just occasionally their coursework overlapped and it would have been unbearable if they'd had to see one another under those circumstances.

**[ "54.5 kg and that's not the point. Do not talk to my Meemaw. SC" ] **

**[ "Meemaw called again while you were in class. She was very insistent. She offered to cable money for sandwiches. SH" ]**

**[ "Why would she keep calling when I'm in class? She knows my schedule. Do not accept money from her! SC" ]**

Sherlock responded, quite diplomatically he thought, that perhaps Meemaw lacked the intelligence or education to comprehend how time zones work. In reality, Sherlock was fairly certain that Meemaw was taking deliberate advantage of discovering the times when Sherlock was home to answer the telephone but Sheldon was not. Sherlock was beginning to feel like a double-agent in some sort of covert Texas spy ring.

Unfortunately the American's revenge was swift and terrible.

**[ "Mummy worries you aren't getting enough fresh air and sunlight. (Does she think you're a plant?) Also she thinks you aren't eating enough. She said Croft would be taking care of it. SC" ]**

Mycroft showed up before Sherlock had even read that note. His visit was mercifully brief. Mycroft informed him that he now had an account at a small cafe and if he did not use it for a minimum of one meal per day, Mummy would know. At Mummy's direction, Mycroft had also taken the liberty of establishing an account for Dr Sheldon Cooper who was also expected to use it daily or Meemaw would know. The lunch accounts were irrelevant, mildly appreciated even. What sent a chill through his bones was the inevitable realization that Mummy and Meemaw were _in contact_ , and apparently _coordinating_.

Sheldon and Sherlock met for lunch every day thereafter. It was more face-to-face contact than they'd had during all the months they'd shared living quarters up to that point. The established parameters were that if Sherlock didn't show up, Sheldon would inform Mummy. If Sheldon skipped a meal, Sherlock would tell Meemaw. And if neither of them were seen, the cafe's owners would rat them both out to Mycroft.

The cafe was run by an older couple or was supposedly run by them both, but only the wife had ever been present and working, at least as far as Sherlock had observed. It was in Whitechapel, conveniently located between their flat and Queen Mary University of London where Sheldon was engaged in some sort of utterly meaningless work involving theoretical nonsense. Of course the location led to the inevitable historical conversation and Sheldon shared his own theories which, oddly enough, involved H.G. Wells and a time machine. Sherlock decided there was no point in even attempting to explain the truth.

The cafe seemed to specialize in students and the proprietress was well suited to doting on them all in a quasi-maternal role. One day when it was particularly busy, she pulled an extra chair to their table saying, "You don't mind if Mike joins you, do you? He's having a bit of difficultly with the maths that you're both so good at."

"I'm good at maths!" Mike insisted. "Really, I am, but this isn't maths. It's ... I don't know what it is!"

"It's just simple pattern recognition," Sherlock insisted, before even looking at the page that Mike was waving around.

"Pattern recognition?" Sheldon perked up. "May I see? I always loved doing this when I was a boy."

"I'll never understand this," Mike wailed.

He was still stammering about the impossibility of his assignment when they entered the flat. The next morning The Flatmate Agreement would have another page.

**[ "No visitors without prior notice. SC" ]**

It would take several more scribbled messages back and forth before they worked out that Mike Stamford was effectively a complete stranger that neither had invited. They each had absently assumed he belonged to the other when he followed them home.

Their mutual circle of friends increased by exactly one that day, primarily by default. It wasn't that either of them were too polite to tell Mike to shove off and in fact, each in their own way, they both did. Mike Stamford was just too good-natured to notice their rudeness. He was older than both of them and would one day, God save England, be a medical doctor. With the combined assistance of Sherlock Holmes and Sheldon Cooper, he just barely met his mathematics requirements.

There were fewer notes after that as Sherlock and Sheldon occasionally spoke to one another over lunch. Sheldon proved useful not only in the continued general tidying of the flat, but also Sherlock had to grudgingly admit that the sock index he'd created was really a stroke of brilliance.

Sherlock wasn't sorry at all when Dr Cooper's time in England came to an end. He no longer had to wonder what would turn up in the Flatmate Agreement next. The binder and the label maker both left with Sheldon. The final note on the coffee table had read:

**[ "Have you considered medication? They're experimenting with all manner of chemicals these days. SC" ]**

He still ate lunch once a day, work permitting, at the same cafe, though what little he gleaned about the proprietor's husband began to worry him. Sherlock cancelled the home telephone line to ensure no future flatmate would so easily interact with Mummy again. He'd never really seen the point of mobile phones before. Just expensive toys, he'd thought at first. But useful for keeping your phone calls away from others. He owned the mobile for four days before even bothering to figure out what the "text" feature was for.

He never precisely missed Sheldon Cooper, but just sometimes when his flatmate of the month (they rarely lasted longer) was having hysterics in the kitchen, he'd experience the vague recollection that there had once been a label maker around here somewhere. One of these days he'd remember to buy another one. Eventually.

**Author's Note:**

> It started out as a question of which of them is most annoying, but ended as more of a how-they-made-each-other-even-worse origin story.


End file.
